The Price of Beauty
by silversouleater
Summary: Akira was the type that always watched others from the background,but one day she is thrust onto the battlefield when she discovers a dark family secret.Will she be able to cope with the reality of it all?


**The Price of Beauty**

By Silversouleater

**Chapter 1:Prologue**

The rain continued to pour as Akira blankly stared out her bedroom window. The day she had been anticipating for nearly a year, her birthday, had come and gone in a matter of hours. The guests had all left, the cake was consumed, and her presents were unwrapped and neatly put away in her closet. She had expected her fourteenth birthday to be a day worth remembering, a day where she could do whatever she desired--within reason, of course--without her parents breathing down her neck or giving her the 'how to evade mental institute escapees' speech. Her expectations turned out to be wrong. In fact, this was the complete opposite. It was the most depressing day she had ever experienced, and she couldn't figure out why to save her life.

Her emerald eyes blinked twice as they continued to stare when her laptop meowed, signaling that one of her friends had just logged on. Ah, friend--a word that most people wouldn't consider Akira to be. She didn't believe that she needed anyone else anyway, because the two friends she had were the best she could ever hope for. She folded the screen up and read the name: _penguin-tamer-of-DOOM._ She smiled.

_x-monochrome-x_: Hey, Kairi!

_Penguin-tamer-of-DOOM_: Hey Kira!--hugs-- so what's up?

_x-monochrome-x_: Absolutely nothing.--sigh--

_Penguin-tamer-of-DOOM: _Aw, why so blue panda bear?

Actually, this was where they had first met. It was about two years ago and then they found out that they passed each other every day in the hallways at school. Naturally, they've been inseparable ever since. There were many things Akira liked about Kairi. She had a wonderful personality. She was loud, energetic, and always seemed happy. She always put her friends' problems before her own and always managed to put a smile on Akira's face with her caring words and good sense of humor. The guys always drooled over her too.

That was another thing Akira admired about her best friend; she was very pretty. She was 5'3", had long brownish-blonde hair, smoky blue eyes, and braces. Akira, being an inch shorter and a year younger, with long dirty blonde hair, dark green eyes, and glasses couldn't help but be jealous of her just a bit. But hey, who doesn't get jealous of their friends once in a while?

_x-monochrome-x_: Well, today isn't exactly what I had expected it to be. Being honest, I've never felt so depressed. I can't help but feel that something bad is about to happen…..

_Penguin-tamer-of-DOOM_: Hey, it's your birthday. Cheer up. I know! How about I come over to your house and stay the night?

_x-monochrome-x_: Oh, yeah! That would be awesome! And I think we still have some left over pizza.

_Penguin-tamer-of-DOOM_: Oh, yum! My parents just bought _The Hills Have Eyes_, too.

_x-monochrome-x_: Great….

_Penguin-tamer-of-DOOM:_ Oh, do I sense fear?

_x-monochrome-x_: Of course not! I just recall what happened the last time we watched a scary movie…

_Penguin-tamer-of-DOOM_: Hey, those charges were dropped, thank you! I was sleepwalking anyway. BUT it won't happened again. So, you ready to get scared shitless?

_x-monochrome-x:_ Hell yeah! Bring on the deformed children!

_Penguin-tamer-of-DOOM_: That's the spirit! I'll be there in a few!

_Penguin-tamer-of-DOOM has logged off_

_x-monochrome-x_: Yeah…but why won't this feeling go away? I'm beginning to wonder…

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The next day at school, the two girls sat at their lunch table more engaged in their conversation rather than eating.

"Oh my God, that movie was disgusting!" Kairi pouted as she twirled her rather ill-looking spaghetti with a plastic fork.

"Not as disgusting as the cafeteria food. I don't know about you, but I don't think spaghetti is supposed to be green…," Akira winced as she poked the cold heap of noodles on her tray.

"Eh…," The older girl pushed her tray away from her. "Well, that little girl was just gross. I'm going to have nightmares for a long time…"

"Oh please. Her face was only half-baked." Akira stated coolly as she picked off the edible parts of her pepperoni pizza.

"ONLY half-baked? She looked like she had a bunch of those ghosty fart bubbles from the Super Mario Brothers stuck underneath her skin! How can you eat thinking about that?"

"I wasn't disgusted, that's how. If you think that's bad though, then try having to pick up all those naked baby troll dolls that your sister leaves scattered around the house. Once you've pried two of those things off of each other, there won't be anything that disgusts you. I guarantee it."

"Well, I've lost my appetite so I'm going."

"I'll come with you, then. Don't want to lose our spot outside anyway."

"Oh yes, that would be so tragic." Kairi rolled her eyes, obviously annoyed.

"Why yes, yes it would. If we lose it, we'll be forced to sit in the scorching hot sun which will result in OUR faces being only half-baked." Akira smirked inwardly at the expression of disgust and terror that consumed her friend's face.

"Um…"

"If you think about it though, that wouldn't be so bad. They might even stick us in a future remake of the movie."

"Oh God, we're leaving now!" Kairi grabbed her friend's hand and dragged her outside.

As Akira had mentioned earlier, the sun beat down hard on the enormous grassy field as if it were trying to fry the students below who laughed and chatted happily with their friends. There was a large group of boys to the far left of the field running around like lunatics and tackling each other in an attempt to get their hands on a football while to the far right, a group of both boys and girls battled it out in a male-against-female game of basketball--and it looked like the girls were winning.

The rest of the field was littered with students, some of which sat on the ground to watch the boys play their game or some who preferred to just walk around and stare at the cloudless blue sky until lunch break ended. It was obvious that everyone agreed to it being a beautiful day--the sun shone brightly, there was a nice, cool breeze, and everyone was enjoying themselves for once. Today was the first day in almost three whole months where the students had actually gotten to go outside for lunch, and they were planning on making the most of it.

"You know, that was probably the fastest I've ever seen you run." Akira panted. "Why didn't you try out for track?" She asked as they took their usual spot underneath a tall, shady oak tree.

"I don't think I would do very well." The blue-eyed girl replied, leaning against the tree's strong trunk and folding her arms behind her head.

"What makes you think that?"

"Well, track doesn't scare the living daylights out of me." A big, toothy grin made it's way onto her face.

"Oh, well that explains it," Akira chuckled. The two sat in silence and sighed contentedly as they admired the rare beauty of the day. After a while, Akira broke the silence with another question. "Hey, what did we do in fourth hour Friday?" She digressed; She had gotten checked out due to a dentist's appointment the week before, so she had Kairi fill her in on everything that happened while she was away.

"Um…we talked about some sort of Japanese birth defect or something along those lines. We're going to talk about it again today, I think." Kairi said, still gazing around the huge lot.

"Oh, really? That sounds interesting, for once. Hey--" Akira hadn't finished when the bell signaling fourth period rang.

"Well, looks like you won't have to wait much longer. Let's go!"

"Right behind you!" With that, they picked up their bags and joined the gigantic mass of students. The two teenagers pushed and shoved their way through the thick crowd until their arms grew weak, but they finally reached the tall blue double-door entrance to the large brick building they called Midori Junior High.

Now, the school wasn't exactly what someone would consider elegant. It had the standard parking lots for parents and teachers in the back and out front there was a curved sidewalk-like place for the buses to unload. In the front stood tall, rusty, cast iron bars that only opened during the morning, lunch time, and the afternoon when school let out in an attempt to provide some security, seeing as how the cameras had stopped working a long time ago. Behind these bars was a small courtyard with four concrete benches in a squared pattern and two dying pine trees on both sides of the doors. The architects had tried to add a bit of beauty to the place, but they failed miserably in their attempts. This school was cold, boring, and uneventful and everyone just left it at that.

The inside wasn't exactly colorful, either. At first glance, MJH doesn't really seem all that big, but its students and employees knew better. Inside, the hallways were so long that they seemed almost endless. They were painted a droll beige color on the top half while the bottom half of the walls were painted a light grey that was beginning to peel, revealing a dirty white color. The lockers that lined these horribly out-of-shape walls were just as bad--they were an ugly steel blue color and were so old that many of them had begun to rust or had their locks either lost or stolen. The school's principal was too much of a cheapskate to fix the place up, if even just a little bit, so nobody got their hopes up.

"Come on Kai, we're going to be late," Akira stated drolly as she waited for her friend to gather all the necessary materials for their next class. She never understood why it took Kairi so long to get ready. It was just Oklahoma History, so all she needed was her book and the worksheet that had been assigned last Monday. Why couldn't she just keep things in her backpack? It would make things so much easier.

"Well, my locker isn't exactly clean, you know." Came the low reply as Kairi buried her hands in the filth of the lower part of her locker. Oh, right. Her locker was the local dump.

Silly Akira.

"Found it!" The blue-eyed girl pulled her hand--along with some candy wrappers and a few other things that Akira would rather not identify--out of her locker to reveal a large brown and gold book. "I thought it was gone for good," she sighed in mock worry as she stuffed the text book into her blue shoulder bag.

"It's about time." The younger girl chuckled. "Now can we please get going?"

"Fine, fine. We can go now," Kairi grumbled. "I don't see why you're so excited about fourth hour, though…" The two hoisted their bags onto their shoulders and dashed to the other side of the side of the school.

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The chapter is short, I know, but I promise I'll try and make thins better from here on. You know the rest, drop reviews etc.


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